ORM Achievements
Virginia’s Office of Regulatory Management (ORM) has improved the Commonwealth’s regulatory, permitting, and artificial intelligence (AI) landscapes with innovative and first-of-their-kind strategies. Having achieved great success with these efforts, ORM continues to improve transparency and efficiency in government. Additionally, ORM has compiled free resources, created by the team, that explain how we did it to the general public or other states interested in replicating these efforts.
Regulatory Modernization
- Regulatory improvements save the Commonwealth over $1.2 billion annually
- Reduced or streamlined over 71,000 requirements (over 21% reduction) and shortened guidance documents by over 10 million words (over 42% reduction)
- Regulatory review time in the Governor’s Office is 96% faster than historical standards
- 100% of regulations and guidance documents are publicly visible on the Virginia Regulatory Town Hall website
- The impacts of these accomplishments are felt by individual Virginians and businesses
This one-page document, created by ORM, provides a high-level overview of what regulatory requirements are and why modernizing them is important.
Created by the ORM team, this in-depth Regulatory Reduction Guide explains the strategies implemented by Virginia to help reduce and modernize regulations within executive branch agencies.
Regulatory Economic Analysis Overview
This one-page document, created by ORM, provides a high-level overview of what a regulatory economic analysis is and why it is important.
Regulatory Economic Analysis Manual
Created by ORM’s Director Bull, the in-depth Regulatory Economic Analysis Manual details in laymen’s terms how to conduct a regulatory economic analysis. A deep understanding of economics is not required to understand or implement the analysis laid out within.
Guidance documents (GD) are often used as supplementary material to a regulation to explain how to satisfactorily adhere to said regulation. When these GDs are overly complicated or lengthy, this can complicate regulatory compliance. This document, created by ORM, offers alternatives to the use of GDs and ways to make them more user-friendly.
Cicero Institute Blueprint for State DOGEs
Created by the Cicero Institute, this website serves as a blueprint for other states looking to create a DOGE-like office at the state level. It pools resources and examples from Virginia and other states with offices serving a similar purpose to ORM that have seen success in the modernization space.
Permitting
- Created a best-in-class permitting platform (Virginia Permit Transparency, VPT) to increase transparency and ease of access to permit applications for the general public
- VPT processes more than 100,000 permit applications annually
- VPT’s pilot program helped the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) reduce its average permit processing time by 70%, and similar results are expected from other agencies
- Vast majority of state permit applications are now publicly accessible on VPT
For other states interested in streamlining their licensing and permitting processes, please contact regmanagement@governor.virginia.gov for more information.
For more information, the Virginia Permit Transparency (VPT) website provides an overview of the platform, what it does, its mission, and an optional video tutorial on how the platform is used.
About Virginia Permit Transparency
Artificial Intelligence
- Virginia was one of the first states to release an executive order addressing artificial intelligence
- Created Virginia’s standards and guidelines which encourage innovative uses of the technology while acknowledging the need for data protections
- Actively investigating various AI pilot program opportunities to better understand the technology’s capabilities and limitations
- Established the AI Task Force
This overview document explains the purpose of the AI Task Force.
This link provides access to the issued AI standards housed on the Virginia IT agency website.
AI Use in Education Guidelines
This document, issued by the Governor’s office, sets forth the AI education guidelines
Learn more about Artificial Intelligence